Census challenge

At the time of the launch of the reservation policy, the concept of other backward classes was not in place, and therefore job reservation for them as a group was also not on the agenda. The demands for job reservation came up strongly only after the submission of the reports of the Mandal Commission on 31 December 1980. The commission in its report recommended, inter alia, 27 per cent reservation for jobs under Central government for the members of OBCs.

- UDAYAN HAZARIKA The writer is a former IAS officer, who retired as Secretary, Finance, Government of Assam

The notification for Census 2027 was finally issued by the Government on 16 June 2025. This represents a delay of more than six years as the notice for Census 2021 was issued on 26 March 2019. That notification has now been cancelled, and the government has named the present census "Census 2027." This also indicates that the government has finally admitted that the nation has broken its chain of 150 years' history of uninterrupted census-taking.

Now the government will have to decide whether it will continue the previous tradition of taking a census in the first year of each decade, or a ten-year interval from the present census, to take the next one in 2037. Section 3 of the Census Act 1948 provides the government with the power to notify its decision to take a census and its time. The best course of action in this context will be to continue the present convention of taking census at the beginning of each decade, as this will require only minor readjustment of the data.

The notification dated 16 June has not given any further information regarding the much-talked-about proposal of updating the National Population Registrars (NPR). The NPRs are prepared and updated under the provisions of the Citizenship (Registration of Citizens and Issue of National Identity Cards) Rules, framed under the Citizenship Act 1955. Under Rule 3 (4) of these rules, the Union Government is to issue an order stating the dates for preparation of NPRs.

Similarly, rule 4 of these rules empowers the Central government to carry out house-to-house enumeration for the collection of specified particulars from the persons, including their citizenship status. Thus, it is for the Central government to issue a notification much prior to the beginning of house-to-house enumeration for census 2027. It may be noted that NPR was first prepared in the year 2010, and thereafter these were last updated in the year 2015.